


Interview with a University Snake Wrangler

by cartesiandaemon



Category: FAQ: The "Snake Fight" Portion Of Your Thesis Defense (McSweeney's Post) - Luke Burns
Genre: Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-24
Updated: 2020-12-24
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:14:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28297368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartesiandaemon/pseuds/cartesiandaemon
Summary: Someone from the student newspaper interviews Mr Wright, the person who takes care of the snakes for the university and finds the right one for the Snake Fight Portion of Your Thesis Defence.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 73
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Interview with a University Snake Wrangler

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ionthesparrow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ionthesparrow/gifts).



> This is such a lovely fandom, I couldn't help but write a whole lot more questions and answers! I could go on writing this forever. Thank you to ionthesparrow for inspiring a lot of the thoughts in this story (and a couple of other people's prompts too).
> 
> Obviously this is very very fun, but also I have to admit it does mention in passing some of the problematic aspects of academia too, because I can't write any story without it turning serious at some point. But that was an interesting realisation as I was writing it.

Q. For the latest in this series, I'm interviewing Mr Wright, the Guy Who Handles Snakes for the college. Is "Guy Who Handles Snakes" actually correct?

A. Well, it's right enough. But it's not what we're usually called.

Q. I supposed I should try to get it right for the paper. What should I best say?

A. Well, most people call us "People Who Handle Snakes". Didn't used to be a man's job, you understand. Nowadays, of course, anyone can do it.

Q. Ah, I see! And how did you get into this line of work?

A. Well, I always liked animals. Always had a few cats around the place. And a steady hand, I had. Spent most of my life doing this and that. But it turned out that's exactly what the college liked in a snake handler. Breadth of experience, that's the ticket.

Q. So, snake handling. You choose the snakes for the examinations?

A. Well, yes. But I don't like to think the whole job is like that. You know, mostly anyone could look down a list of students, and their supervisor's ratings, and a list of snakes and their lengths, and match one to the other. And if it says their bibliography is misformatted, maybe tweak things so they get one of the venomous ones. No, it's keeping these poor ladies and lads alive in the middle of these chilly fens the rest of the year that's the challenge, right enough.

Q. How well do the snakes usually cope with this climate?

A. Never perfect, you know But there's a long tradition to draw on here so we mostly muddle through ok. The Little Garden is given over to the snakes that live on site, with banks of coals when needful, or heat lamps more often nowadays. And there's the ophidiary under the kitchens, that's nice and warm for any of my slithery friends who just want to curl up and sleep the time away. Don't go digging around trying to break into the wine cellars, you understand, you might disturb one. They're trained attack snakes.

Q. They're trained attack snakes? I mean, literally, they're trained? To attack? And they are snakes, I know that part.

A. Well, I mean, that's the whole justification, isn't it? The whole "snake fight", as people call it. I wouldn't set one of my little lovvies to chase down a neer-do-well like those police dogs do. But a student, spent most of their time in college trying to get their research finished, and then at the end suddenly trying to bone up a bit on snake handling at the last minute, well, the snake has to put up a good showing, or it's not really a fight, right?

Q. I never really thought to ask this before, but are the snakes all right?

A. Mostly, mostly. There's always some accidents. Most of those doctoral candidates aren't exactly trained ophidian trainers, you know. They panic, not knowing what to expect, and it can get violent. But most of my little beauties are fine for another round in future. There aren't that many candidates, but using up one snake every time wouldn't leave that many. You've got to have a good variety, see, you never know how good the work's going to be.

Q. And, uh, the PhD students? Are they usually all right?

A. I don't always get to know, see? I hand the snakes off, the porters and maintenance staff handle the actual release. Then if one of my ornery beauties got free, or got injured, I come pick up the pieces later. If a human needs medical attention, they don't call me, do they? They call an ambulance.

Q. And do they call an ambulance very often?

A. As I say, like, I don't know exactly. But when I first got this job, I hovered a bit more nervously, see how it all went. Them maintenance jobs, they're pretty handy with the old snake-grippers. Better than me sometimes, I usually rely on the long girls and boys liking me, so I don't have as much practice at trying to restrain them when they're angry. But those people, one of them rushes in pretty quickly if the human looks to be losing. And then there's no need for an ambulance, right. You hear some language then, I can tell you.

Q. Oh?

A. Well, sometimes it's just those young men and women being scared you know, acting out a little. But it counts as a loss, doesn't it, if they can't hold one of these snakes down for a few minutes while explaining their dissertation. Sometimes a maintenance lad runs in, gets the snake off them, a porter brings them around, gentle but stern like, and next thing you know, they're claiming they would have wriggled free and got one of the big mumbas in a headlock. Hah. You want to do that, you do it before it wraps round you, you know?

Q. I see! That makes me think, any tips to anyone preparing for their thesis defence to make the snake fight go a little easier?

A. Write a good thesis.

Q. Well, yes, I see. But if one of my readers said they'd done their best, but they were still worried about the best way of handling the snake at the end, then what should I say to them?

A. Hm, I guess, if you like, any of your nice readers could come down here, bring me a cup of tea out, spend some time with the snakes. Helps a lot, just getting used to them, you know. But no-one ever does.

Q. Well, I hope some people do. Perhaps I should ask instead, what kind of snakes do candidates usually end up dealing with?

A. A whole range, right enough. If you write a solid thesis and the examiners can't find anything to quibble with, you might find yourself coaxing a baby grass snake back into its terrarium.

Q. If the examiners can't find anything to quibble with?

A. I did say "might."

Q. ...

A. And "if,"

Q. But in terms of snakes that you have ever actually seen used in an exam...?

A. All right, fair enough. I won't kid. But at the easy end, a regular grass snake, just like you might find in your garden. Not aggressive, no threat to a competent adult, unless you hurt yourself with your own stupidity. Top-notch thesis, don't absolutely bomb the viva, and you'll probably get something like that. You might even need to search the room for it. If so, it's usually under the radiator.

Q. And the other end of the scale?

A. One of your big constrictors. Something most people couldn't out-wrestle, though every so often someone deals with one another way. Spent too much time worrying about the snake, not enough about the thesis, if you ask me. Soothing music, elaborate cage traps... however clever, those aren't how professionals handle snakes, see?

Q. Not a poisonous snake?

A. We have those too. But we don't usually end up using the very most poisonous. A big constrictor, you can see the threat, if you get tangled up there's time for people to separate you, that's a bit more fair. And less outcry for the college if you're not seriously hurt. Poison, nasty, kills you out of nowhere, and no-one likes to rely on anti-venom however ready they are. So it's not usually a good match to the theses, even the bad ones. Unless you've misformatted your bibliography, of course.

Q. What is it with bibliographies? Why do poisonous snakes care so much about typos in citations?

A. They don't tell that to the likes of me, do they? Snakes just really hate bad citations, even if they're not deliberate plagiarism. Don't think anyone knows why.

Q. What about famous people? Are there any famous stories? Who defeated the smallest ever snake?

A. There's a story about Marie-Curie. Things worked a bit differently back then. She studied informally in the clandestine 'flying university' in Poland in the tail end of the nineteen century, when the occupying Russian empire suppressed scientific teaching, and eventually gained academic positions in Paris where she did most of her famous research. By the time she was awarded a doctorate, she got the Nobel Prize six months later.

Q. And the snake fight?

A. There were always people who didn't think it was appropriate to subject women to snake fights and that academia should remain a man's game. Didn't see men taking care of the snakes back then, of course, so there wasn't much truth to what they were saying, but that's not telling you anything you don't know, of course. Some people wanted to make her fight one of the really big snakes, to prove her worth, or to intimidate her into backing down more likely.

Q. What actually happened?

A. Enough people recognised the genius of her work on radiation that didn't happen. It's generally agreed that she could have defeated any snake the university in Paris had on hand at the time if she'd needed to, let alone the whip snakes most students needed to subdue. She was that focused. But in fact, at the end of her examination, she pulled this grass snake egg out of her pocket and showed everyone. Someone had slipped it to her in advance -- a sign of great achievement, the closest anyone can come to not having to defeat a snake.

Q. Who else? What happened at Karl Marx's thesis defence?

A. Snake wranglers don't Talk About Karl Marx.

Q. Why not?

A. What part of "We Don't Talk About Karl Marx" is giving you trouble here?

Q. Okay then. What about Richard Feynman?

A. We Absolutely Never Talk About Richard Feynman.

Q. I guess that's fair enough.

A. Aye.

Q. What about the idea of not writing a thesis at all, and fighting a snake that "would be very big, very big, indeed"? Does that ever happen? Has anyone ever succeeded?

A. It used to come up every so often, when PhDs were less standardised than they were now. Someone trying to make an easy route in for a favoured student with a clever workaround for the actual fight, or more commonly someone a bit too clever trying to put one over the faculty somehow.

Q. So what happened?

A. Oh, this and that. People squeaked through in any number of questionable ways, and people debated endlessly if it had been valid or not. People who seemed to be cheating the system, the faculty did their best to bend the rules for what constituted "a" snake, or what constituted a "snake".

Q. Like the Lithuanian snake canons? And the Corpus Christi Steam-breathing Homophage?

A. Exactly. Not that most of those over-the-top workarounds were ever widely used in practice. More often, the rules would be bent in a more ad-hoc way. But either way, it was enough to stem the attempts to bypass the system to a slow trickle.

Q. What happens nowadays if someone tries to present themselves for a doctorate without writing a thesis? Or with a trivial thesis?

A. I don't know. They don't show up steam-charred as far as I've heard. But no-one's ever asked me to find a suitable snake for such an occasion either, so I don't know any more than you.

Q. So what about the worst snake that anyone has been officially assigned?

A. There was a case in the 90's. A student at M.I.T had a lot of problems, pulled it together enough to write a thesis, but then had this massive melt-down in the viva, screaming slurs at the examiners, and trying to attack them.

Q. Oh my god. And what happened?

A. They'd had this massive snake ready, a really big mamba, trained to subdue someone very firmly, but non-fatally, in case he demanded a snake fight when he really shouldn't have been submitting at all. When he attacked the examiners, they released it, and it quickly pinned him, but he had some kind of a fit and it they couldn't get the snake off him quickly enough.

Q. Was he ok?

A. He wasn't really ok before, but he survived that. I heard he got his life together later on, apologized for some of the things he used to say.

Q. And that was the worst snake anyone used to fight?

A. Of course not! There's always plenty of people the establishment want to keep out of recognised academia, and tricks upon tricks upon tricks people pull to make it happen. Snakes that look harmless but are actually venomous. Snakes that don't sound so threatening, but tormented to the point of frenzy before being released. Paperwork errors leading to an unfairly large snake, and a too-late apology. Snakes being released early or late. Venomous snakes and anti-venom that's not really good enough. Some justification for why the nasty snake is necessary for a particular student, despite them having good research. Not everyone trying to break in to academia can be Marie Curie, you know, and if you weren't the right sort of posh arrogant boy, the snake was one way they might decide to show you did't fit.

Q. Ah yes. Of course, no tradition can just be a tradition, it always has to have a sordid history.

A. Lots of history is like that.

Q. What would you say if one of my readers asked why were you willing to work for an institution which perpetuated a tradition with such an unfortunate history?

A. I'd ask, why were they willing to attend an institution which perpetuated a tradition with such an unfortunate history.

Q. Good point.

A. You're welcome. And you're welcome to come down here again, have a brew, and meet the snakes some more, if you'd like.

Q. Thank you, Mr Wright. I don't know if I will have time, but it would be nice. On those notes, I probably should make time for some studying today. Is there any last message you'd like to give to our readers?

A. (holds up snake) Marquessa Hiss says Happy Christmas!


End file.
